However by the time she went to Durham University, where she studied English, she changed her mind about an acting career.

She joined a comedy group and began writing sketches with the only other female member, Tiffany Wood. Eventually, the pair wrote a play, Shaking Cecilia, which got into the National Student Drama Festival and won the Sunday Times playwriting award in 2004.

Encouraged by this, Charlotte applied for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She was accepted and graduated in 2007.

Read More

Two years later she got her big break when she won the role of Catherine in ITV’s Wuthering Heights opposite future husband Tom Hardy who played Heathcliffe.

Since then she has gone to achieve a series of high profile roles.

Charlotte Riley poses for a selfie with fans at the premiere of Peaky Blinders: Series 2 (Image: PA)

In 2014 she starred in the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller Edge of Tomorrow, as well as adventure-drama In the Heart of the Sea, also starring Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker and her Peaky Blinders co-star Cillian Murphy.

She also took a leading role in BBC2 drama Close to the Enemy, set in post-WWII London. Her character, an alluring American named Rachel, catches the eye of star Jim Sturgess’s Army intelligence officer Callum; problem is, she’s engaged to his best friend.

And Charlotte also starred as Kate Middleton in BBC drama King Charles III, based on a play of the same name that imagines a future in which Prince Charles accedes to the throne.

It was in 2014 that Charlotte married Tom Hardy, who starred in The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, and the Dark Knight Rise in which he played the character Bane. Hardy has also appeared in Peaky Blinders as Jewish gang leader Alfie Solomons.